“BIG CITY” DOCTOR ENDED UP A COUNTRY PRACTITIONER

[Welland Tribune June 7, 1978]

By Dorothy Rungeling

In a pretty 42 year old house on Canboro Road in Fenwick there lives a man who, after graduating from medical school 52 years ago has his sights on becoming a “big city doctor”. Instead he has practiced for 50 years as a country general practitioner in Fenwick and has loved every minute of it.

Dr. Joe Dowd, one of seven boys. Four of whom became doctors, graduated from McGill in 1926, went to Ottawa Civic Hospital and then to New York City to gain experience in obstetrics. It was common occurrence for him to be called out at three in the morning to a house in the lower east side of New York—a tough part of town—He says: If it hadn’t been for my doctor’s bag I’d have been shot for sure,” but everyone respected the “Doc”.

It was while  he was in New York that he decided this free living, bright lights life was for him and he decided he would never be a farmer’s doctor—no sir—he would be a city doctor. But fate had other plans for him.

During this time his brother Ken had purchased a medical practice from Dr. Page in Fenwick, but Ken had an opportunity to go on to bigger and better things so he fired off telegrams to Joe in New York imploring him to come to Fenwick and buy him out. Joe did.

The first week in June, 1928, Dr.Joe Dowd moved into Fenwick and started his “big city practice” in the quiet of a rural area. Shortly after this he moved his office from the Dalrymple house to the A.N. Armbrust house where he lived in a room over his office. Then he met and married his late wife,Charlotte, who was then the night supervisor at Welland County General Hospital, and they took over the whole house.

Dr. Dowd can’t recall who his  very first patient was in Fenwick, but remembers that Mr. and Mrs Charlie Elliott and Mrs Grace Brown were among the first, and are still his patients. Asked who his most interesting patient was he replied without hesitation: Ethelwyn Wetherald!  And recalled a story. He had instructed her to get lots of rest. The next time he called on her she greeted him with “I’ve been resting like fury!”

His mode of transportation in 1928 was a four year old Model ‘T’ Ford, but in wintertime he found himself getting to his patients any way he could, after getting a farmer to open snowbound roads. He recalls one trip west of Fenwick to deliver a baby. He had to get the roads opened, took his nurse Bernice Swayze with him, delivered the baby and then had to stay all night at the house because they couldn’t get back to Fenwick.

The Dowds had three children, Joyce, Richard and Ronald who followed in his father’s footsteps to become a doctor. In 1936 they built their new brick home. It was furnished just when Ronald was born so”my wife and Dr. Ron had a brand new house to come home to.”This was a milestone in the life of a country doctor.

During the “dirty thirties”—the depression years—Dr. Dowd found it hard going. People got sick but had no money. Nonetheless he answered their calls and took vegetables, fruit, eggs or poultry as payment. Babies were delivered at home. No one could afford the hospital. The charge was $5 a day. St Catharines General put on a “special” to induce mothers to come. It was $27 to look after both mother and child for the ten-day hospital stay. Still no one could afford it.

During his first few years in Fenwick Dr. Dowd had two to three hundred patients, but this number swelled as the years rolled by until five years ago when he semi retired.

He was our family physician for years and a good, kind doctor he was. Of course in those days there was time to be spent with a patient. Sitting down for a friendly chat before getting down to the actual doctoring was a large part of the therapy.Dr Dowd could even be talked into rendering a violin solo on my violin, although he had not played since college days. And he did a pretty good job on scraping out Humoresque on those strings.but politics was a subject to be avoided. He really had his convictions on who was right and who was wrong, and once on the subject he didn’t let go until he had panned out all the “bad ones” right out of the park.

In the thirties an office call was $1.25 and a house call was $3.00—and would you believe that this amount also covered the medicine? Yes, just a visit from the doctor and all was taken care of—physically, mentally and emotionally.

He was not one to put an elderly patient through the rigors of painful practices if he could bring them back to near normality without it. My mother broke her hip when she was in her 70s. He decided against putting her in traction. His evaluation of the case was that it would be easier on an elderly person to skip the pain, even though one leg would be shorter. A built up shoe fixed that and she lived her remaining years in comfort

Dr. Dowd is now one of the senior doctors on the staff of Welland County General and although he modestly denies it, at 82 he must be one of, If not the oldest practicing physician in the peninsula.

He thinks the most significant change In medicine in the last 50 years is the drop in tuberculosis and wiping out diseases such as smallpox and diphtheria.”Do you know that there isn’t one case of smallpox in the world today?” he asked “ “And there is no one in the Niagara Sanatarium? Thirty years ago it was full!”

Before I left I asked: “Are you still using the same cough medicine you used in the 30s?” “Sure,”he replied impishly. “My it was good,” I said. “There must have been some really good things in it.” “Sure”, he said again, but wouldn’t say what.

So, after 50 years and bringing 1200 babies into this world, Dr. Joe Dowd is quietly going on a semi-retired practice. He says he likes to look after his senior patients “because I understand them- I know their troubles—I know what to give them” He has often been known to put a patient in his own car and take them to Hamilton or Welland Hospital for surgical attendance.

A patient leaving his office  as I was going in stopped to chat, and said “Dr Dowd has looked after my family for 50 years and I sure would not want to change.”

Fenwick is proud of it’s. longtime doctor., and if well wishers hold any away, he will be around another 50 years.